All I really wanted to write about today is faeries.

What I planned to write today about was camping, masculinity, Bly and Eldridge's concept of the father wound, and mythopoetic thinking in general. Maybe tomorrow. But this afternoon, as I was writing that post, I read that the Federal government is going to give me six hundred bucks because a) I have a job, and b) apparently a bunch of people all over the country bought houses they couldn't afford and this is directly causing economists to get a lot of face time on TV shows shouting about how the sky is recessing, the sky is recessing! So I got distracted and wrote this.

I could spend an awful lot of time talking about how insulted I am that the government couldn't afford to give me my own six-hundred bucks back before antisavvy house-buyers overextended themselves with loans with interest rates that every person in the world knew would eventually go up, but now Congress has mystically made room in the cyclopean budget for me to get that money back. And also how insulting it is how much this smacks of the assumption that all that money is supposed to be the government's in the first place, and all of us widdle incompetent idiots get a pat on the head and a check for six-hundred bucks and are sent on our happy way to the candy store to pick out something for our very, very own. It reminds me of the insult of affirmative action, "Aw, you poor widdle minority-status person. We know you could never make it into our institution of awesome learning on your own. So, just because of the color of your skin, and our own sense of guilt-built-in superiority, we're gonna let you right through the doors. Good luck, now. Too bad you're too dumb to do it yourself."

But this is just another brick stacked on an already towering pile of very important 'national issues' that I am getting completely fed up with. No, not fed up with, I'm still very interested in the issues. Uh . . . how about 'weary of.' Yes. That works. I am weary of all of these issues. Issues, that, like I said, I care about. I care about the economy doing well, and people paying less taxes, and Ron Paul becoming president, and homeless people in New Orleans having a place to live, and people not starving in Africa, and Lukashenka not being a bastard, and people wanting to live in a country where they have a chance to fail that also provides them a change to succeed, and people in Africa having clean water to drink, and people in Manila not having to live in shacks, but I'm as worn out as (get ready for it) using an innuendo as a simile for 'worn out'.

I'm not trying to repeal my own person Monroe Doctrine here. I can't bring myself to preach personal isolationism. I really do care about people around the county, and around the world. But I've got so much going on within my immediate purvey that I can't keep up with as it is: Kansas City politics, and Kansas City racial tensions, and Kansas city homeless people, and trying to know my neighbors, and people I know who are hurting that I need to weep with, and human trafficking in Kansas City, and maintaining deep friendships, and building new friendships with people unlike me, and sacrificing myself for my enemies, and keeping my own yard neat (let alone the whole environment nearby), and keeping my house clean enough to be a good host, and when and where and should we move, and when and where and should we have kids,and spending time with with the muse-Jill, and maintaining a relationship with that deific being who created the universe, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.

I just want to shut down and avoid the chaos. Oh, hey, I guess this does tie in to what I wanted to write about originally, how guys want to shut down and get passive in unfamiliar situations And how my default post-situational self-examination defaults to WARNING! -failure- no matter what actually happened. But that's still a whole other day's post.

The problem with seriously investing myself emotionally in all of these things that I don't have a direct impact on, things miles and miles from my influence, is that I'm trying to follow Jesus. Trying to shape my entire life around his teachings. Which, as Steve and Paul of Tarsus his very self will tell you, I will always fail at. (But I don't think that doesn't mean I shouldn't try). Anyway, I've said this before, but Jesus says that his 'kingdom' is not part of the dominant worldviews of the time (the kosmos, that is). That is, all the stuff that Jesus is talking about, all his loving other people and family of God stuff, and vine and branches business is not necessarily tied up in the systems that we try to use. Our politics and governments and businesses and most of our ways of wanting to do things, and a'that.

I think that it's all more personal, and all more communal than those things. That, as a person or a small group of people trying to follow Jesus, I or we need to address the problems that I or we see with the people around me or us, and put myself or ourselves in situations with those kinds of problems. So, I'll end up not caring about dunDUN . . . The Homeless, but care about Kevin and Lolo and know them and try to help them with what they need personally. And I won't care about . . . The Coming Recession, but rather help out someone I know were they to lose their job. So with whatever system is out there, whoever gets to rule the world from on high, I've still got a mandate and a plan of action to help ad love people I see.

(Which, again, is why I like Ron Paul, because I feel like his system is the one that would make me most likely to have to choose something good if I wanted to see anything get better. I'm kind of forced into it. There isn't any big impersonal government to pitch in. I mean, I agree with Barack Obama that 'the people' need an advocate, but I don't think that advocate is the government, I think it's just everyday people who see needs around them.)

But part of the problem is, with the internet and TV, I'm omnivisual. I see it all. Everything comes to my doorstep and says, "Hey, what's goin' on here? Bad crap is hitting the fan over here in Indonesia" Or Maldives, or Belarus, or Darfur, or Kenya. I want to help, and don't know if I can. I think Ron Paul's idea of foreign policy is challenging and interesting: the one in which Americans wouldn't be able to just send the military to solve problems other places in the world, where if you wanted to see a war end somewhere, get on a plane and go stand in the way. But I don't know if I would be able to do that.

And being a person trying to follow Jesus doesn't help much in this tension of proximity and appropriate action. It's not like Jesus lived in a time in which he would say, "When you see a person starving on TV, but you haven't seen a starving person near you lately, do X," or "When you live in a society in which everyone is richer than the kings of my day, do Y." He lived in a time where almost his entire audience was taxed past poverty into destitution. All he said was to love your enemy, and love God, and blessed are the poor, and love everybody better than you love yourself. I mean, if I'm in trouble, I want someone who lives near me to help i, AND I want someone in England to help me too. How should I then treat the people I see with my eyes vs. the people I read about on Fark?

So instead of addressing these really big worldwide issues, issues I care about in which people are dying in Darfur or starving in Indonesia, my first response is to blow it off because those things aren't immediately around me, and the things around me require me attention. This is all tied up then, in being present where I am.

Then the question becomes, "Do I change where I am to be with people even worse off than the people around me now?" Seems like a Jesusy idea. But in the meantime, I can't ignore what I see in my immediate vicinity. This is the chaos and the confusion that I find myself needing to step into, to surf in, even it it means I might fall and get lost in the maelstrom.

Which is why I'm putting off exploring myth and manhood for today, because I think it's a lot more important for me to ask myself the question, "Who is my neighbor?" than , "What does it mean to be masculine given what I know about Kings Elessar and David?" Mostly because I just think the first question is a lot closer to home. And because the asking is the first step to the answering, which is the first step to action. And I want to be a Man of Action. Which, I think, also, is another post for another day.

So, g'night. And all peace to you. I've been home for 40 minutes after Eric's bachelor party writing the last few paragraphs while the muse-Jill has been keeping the bed warm. So I'm off.